Once a quirky financing option for intrepid entrepreneurs, crowdfunding has evolved into a fast, effective way to raise cash for just about any endeavor. Even the producers of the upcoming Charlie Kaufman movie, Anomalisa , raised money this way in order to maintain creative freedom for their project.

Scott Steinberg is a small business expert, professional keynote speaker, noted strategic consultant, and creator of The Business Expert's Guidebook series and video show Business Expert: Small Business Tips, Trends and Advice.

Here's 4 tips to take advantage of social networks to raise money from investors. You'll also hear from Daniel Epstein, CEO of the Unreasonable Institute, which requires applicants crowdfund to pay its fees to attend.

When writer-director Liz Manashil decided to produce her first feature film, she asked a simple question: Do you feel that romantic comedies represent events and characters that don't exist in real life? If your answer is yes, she's asking you to fund Bread and Butter, a dark romantic comedy that focuses on the moving, authentic moments of courtship and love.

There are three main ways you can crowdfund. Here's a quick rundown. 1. Equity Equity-based corwdfunding is when you ask a crowd to donate to your business in exchange for equity Who? Equity-based crowdfunding is a fast, efficient, and easy way for entreprenteurs and start-ups to generate investment opportunities Where?

Crowdfunding-raising funds from "crowds" of individuals online via websites like Kickstarter and IndieGoGo-has been used to finance thousands of projects, inventions and businesses in the past few years. Now, a provision of the recently enacted JOBS Act, called the CROWDFUND Act, will greatly expand entrepreneurs' ability to raise money by crowdfunding.

This post was written by Michael Parks and initially published by Mosaic, a platform that makes it easy for anyone to directly invest in community-scale solar energy projects. Crowdfunding is growing fast: in 2011, a comprehensive review put the industry's size at $1.5 billion, and projected that it would grow to $2.8 billion by the end of 2012.

Back on Nov. 9, I published a list of 10 Kickstarter projects every geek should support, and put my money where my mouth was by creating the World Wide Wade Kickstarter Fund. I pledged $10 to each project on the list (eventually there were 13 in all), and promised that I'd return in a few weeks to let you know how my bets turned out.

Crowdfunding might sound easy, but successful crowdfunding generally doesn't happen by accident. Startups that are most successful at crowdfunding usually have a lot of things going for them, according to Scott Steinberg, a crowdfunding expert and author of the newly released " The Crowdfunding Bible," a free downloadable book.

Tweet After The JOBS Act , crowdfunding has become one of the most popular and one of the best options of raising money for projects and small businesses. But how can you run a successful crowdfunding campaign? Here are 10 useful tips that will jumpstart your project and most importantly will keep you out there [...]